The Doctor Who Storybook 2010 is out now and amongst other delights it features Space Vikings! a strip written by Jonny Morris and drawn by Ian Culbard and me. I was originally commissioned to do the whole strip, but due to workload I'd asked Ian to do the colour. I did the layouts for the strip then got ill and realised that I wouldn't have time to pencil up all the pages. I asked Ian to help me out and take over pencil duties which he did and from there began a weird game of comic strip tennis as we batted the strip back and forth to such a degree that working out who did what is virtually impossible. Ian changed some of the layouts, I changed some of his pencils when I inked the pages, he changed some of the inks as he coloured and just for good measure I changed his colours around several times until I was happy with it.
Below is an example of how things evolved from layouts to pencils to inks and then a colour version.
My wild roughs, thankfully Ian could understand them - the script was lacking rhythm so I added the little viking-ish motifs to punctuate it (I did a Drashig in one actually, and Ian managed to get the TARDIS in this one)
Ian' delightful pencils
...which I then scrawled over with my inks. I adjusted small things here and there because I like a more angular 2 dimensional feel to composition (especially when it comes to positioning scrawny Mr Tennant). Things like that incredible ceiling that Ian did I just painstaking traced - even my mad obsessive approach allows me to realise when someone has done something infinitely better that I could.
This was Ian's first colour version. Nice, but I didn't like the orange
This was my version replacing the orange with red - which Ian hated
and this was the winner - we both liked the blue!
Each page went through this bizarre back and forth process making this a true collaboration and something both of us can be proud of without any trace of arrogance. You see, I don't know who drew this strip because it doesn't look like it was either of us.
![[huzzahnoir2.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfLdDLBBPfTSXRPWrnWAtBD0aOZCN-zriqioFPJjPJkoxY_aiXqD070FccoLIdFOmwjNgUsYhjDfS9Rby_Ma7JXa-i5imDIl2Ytku1_gMjs3jRgRlOJMALTP_pDI6ovoek8_Uhz-zi7Eum/s1600/huzzahnoir2.jpg)
3 comments:
very nice! any chance we'll see another team up perhaps on a Huzzah page?
We may well team up again, but it would be for something a tad bigger than a Huzzah page...
Lovely stuff. Like seeing the process, it's like Wheatley and Hempel!
Will havta pick this up. Wish I could afford the DW mag for your latest strip, it looks beautifully bonkers. I'll have to hope for a collection.
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